”You have such a cold heart for a woman”, Ozzie said quietly. He reached out his hand and gently stroked the scars on her cheekbones.
Hellrien quirked an eyebrow, genuinely surprised by Ozzie’s assessment. ”What do you mean by that?”
Ozzie pulled his hand away. ”You strike such a plump, womanly figure from a distance. And the way you move and talk - so calm, quiet, almost passive. But up close, it’s all a charade. Inside you are ice and steel, to match those scars of yours.”
”Must be from my father’s side.” Hellrien was surprised that Ozzie would see her in that way. She never intentionally tried to be anything she wasn’t or put on a charade of any kind. She was who she was, that’s all there was to it. But was she cold-hearted? Callous? She had never really thought about it before.
”Your father… did he give you those scars?”
”No. He never laid a hand on me.”
”But do you hate him?”
Hellrien thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. ”There was a time, a long time ago, when I wanted nothing more than for him to notice me – to acknowledge me. But a lot has happened since then. I don’t really think about him anymore.”
”Have you ever been in love, Hellrien?”
”Sure. Like right now.”
”You’re a lousy liar.”
”Is that what you’re after, Ozzie? Fishing out for love confessions?”
”Who are you, Hellrien? Where do you come from? Why are you here?”
”Enough talking about me. Let’s talk about you for a change. Like, what are you doing here? What’s that pile of crates outside? Seems to me you would need some kind of cart to move them, but I haven’t seen any carts here.”
Ozzie shrugged. ”I don’t know what’s in them. We get paid for guarding them. One cart brings them from the west – Bree, I suppose – and a few days later another cart comes to pick them up. From east.”
”And you don’t know where they are going or who arranges the traffic?”
”Nope.”
”Who does?”
”Kyle. And Harmon.” Ozzie hesitated. ”Y’see… the men who come to pick up the crates… they’re not altogether human.”
”Not human?”
Ozzie shook his head. ”Mixed blood. Half-breeds. Half men, half orcs.”
”And who’s the leader here? Kyle? His brother, the Brute? Harmon?”
”I’m not sure how the big picture works. But it looks like Harmon is the main figure behind the cart traffic from Bree, and Kyle and the Brute have some kind of connection with the receiving end. You see… the Brute is not entirely human either. He has assigned his brother Kyle as a sort of overseer here, but Harmon has never liked either of them much. So I wouldn’t be surprised if he would now attempt to cut off a couple of middle-men from the deal.”
”Harmon said he’d be back by tonight… why didn’t he come?”
Ozzie shrugged. ”Harmon comes and goes, nobody knows what he’s up to. Most of us are just pawns here. We get paid to guard the crates and to keep our mouths shut.”
”Yesterday you mentioned somebody else, a woman’s name… Joan Darkhand? Who’s she?”
Ozzie hesitated. ”Joan Darkhand is some kind of a legend in this region. An outlaw and a treasure hunter. I’ve heard countless stories about her, most of them invented. I have never met her myself, and sometimes I think she doesn’t really exist at all, but a rumor has it that Harmon knows her. The legends also call her ’The Faceless’.”
”Why?”
”In the stories she always wears a mask or a veil.”
Hellrien didn’t say anything for a moment. She remembered what Stanric had said many days ago, about the strange woman in Ost Guruth: ”…she wore a mask, like a black veil... I could only see her eyes!”
”Today I got some Dalish whiskey”, Ozzie said. ”Do you want some?”
”Let’s have it.”
And so they drank and talked and got drunk as the moon slowly climbed up to the sky. It had been a cloudy day, but now sky had cleared up. On the other side of the Great East Road the hills arose against the night sky, dark and mysterious. A warg howled somewhere out there and received a reply from the northern side of the road.
Ozzie leaned forward and kissed Hellrien carefully. He leaned back, and Hellrien rolled on him.
A cold gust of wind blew from the south. A fox yipped quietly in a bush of high grass nearby. Far, far away a warg howled at the moon again.
